Laserfiche WebLink
INTRODIICTION <br />Northwestern Colorado is rich in surface-mineable coal <br />reserves that are presently being extracted by several commercial <br />ventures. Land has been temporarily taken out of use as grazing <br />land and wildlife habitat. These lands are being reclaimed to meet <br />these same land use objectives in accordance with the Federal <br />Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (PL 95-87j and <br />the Colorado Surface Coal Mining Reclamation Act of 1979 (CRS 34- <br />33-. An important and expensive part of reclamation at a surface <br />mine site is the preservation and reapplication of topsoil. The <br />high costs of transporting soil, the importance of keeping the <br />removal and replacement volumes in balance, and the need to <br />reconstruct a self-perpetuating plant community combine to make <br />• determination of optimum soil depth both economically and <br />ecologically important. <br />Most overburden is less suitable than soil for supporting <br />vegetation. Important plant nutrients are frequently deficient in <br />overburden or held in unavailable forms and overburden texture is <br />often not conducive to optimum plant growth. Woodmansee et al. <br />(1978) stated the revegetation on overburden without topsoil would <br />be similar to primary succession and as much as 2100 years of <br />succession would be required for the nitrogen pool to grow large <br />enough to support a stable, self-sustaining plant-soil system. <br />Many topsoil studies have been conducted to examine the <br />influence of topsoil quality (Power et al. 1981 and 1976), the <br />response to topsoil depth (Redente and Hargis 1985, Schuman and <br />Power 1981, McGinnies and Nicholas 1980, Sindelar et al. 1973) and <br />